Mountain top Musings: Recognizing the True Value of Life

The other evening my wife and I were over at some friend's house for dinner. While there we watched the Mecum Auto auction for a while. It was exciting to see the cars and the action. Like many men, and women too, I enjoy really tricked-out, high performance muscle car from the 50's, 60's and early 70's. I also don't mind the older cars, and the newer exotic rocket ships from Europe and Japan that are out there. The talent and skill that people have to do the mechanical and cosmetic work on those cars sold at a Mecum auction is amazing.

I have not seen one of those auctions for several years and it was astonishing to see what cars were going for! As a kid growing up in the downriver Detroit area in the late 60's and going to high school from '72-'76 it was the best of times. There were muscle cars everywhere. Most of our parents worked for the Big Three auto companies, or a major steel mill. For a while I lived within bicycling distance of the Detroit Drag Strip and knew all the holes in the fence where a kid could sneak in! A neighbor had a 1965 high performance black on black, two-door Pontiac Grand Prix. He would fill our cul-de-sac with "smoke and burnt-rubber" then drive off to the ¼ mile drag strip. It was amazing!

At one time I had a 300 hp 1957 Chevy Bel-Aire. Another car I had was a 1963 Chevy II Nova, 2-door, white with a red interior. I also had a base model 1969 Javelin, but hey we all make mistakes! Friends had '67 Camaros, '70 Novas, one friend had two 1970 T/A Challengers that were unbelievably fast. I also had a '70 Firebird with a small-block 400 that could scream. I could go on and on telling stories about racing around in those days and burning our tires to shreds. The point is, we were using and abusing a gold-mine of "Detroit Muscle" and had no idea. We took those cars for granted. We would crash'em and bash 'em, fix them up and do it all over.

If I knew that one day my Chevy II would sell for $24-$50K or more I would not have sold it for $1800. Or sold the body of my '57 for $400, or the '69 Javelin for $30. Yes $30 was the price (I hated that car!). You see I did not realize the value of those cars, nor did many of my friends. We were living for the moment, and lost sight of the future value those cars would have. Maybe they had an electrical problem, or a damaged transmission, so we sold them cheap. Not thinking that investing a bit of effort and time would yield a great benefit. I find it hard to believe a '69 Camaro LT1 is worth $950,000 but someone did!

With this month being Sanctity of Life month, I see some sad parallels between how we treated those cars and how our society treats something infinitely more valuable than a car. The failure of our time is not the military wars, the unsustainable debt, or climate-change dribble. It is the cheap value we have allowed and accepted for a human life. I don't just mean the horror of abortion, but also the euthanasia craze sweeping our nation and Canada. Many say if you are depressed, here is a pill, go take care of it. Some even say you don't want that baby, throw it in the trash bin, and here are some ear plugs to keep you from hearing its screams. Oh, that elderly person can't "contribute", well let's pull the plug and get on with spending their life savings.

There is a close parallel to this diminishing value of human life from the womb to the nursing home and our diminished view of Almighty God. When we fail to honor God for who He is in how we live, we can't help but fail to see how His image is stamped into the DNA of each precious soul at the moment of conception. All Human Life is Sacred because all Human Life is made and designed in the "image of God" (Genesis 1: 26-27; Psalm 127; Psalm 139: 1-18). If we valued human life as much as God does I think most of our problems would vanish in to thin air like the smoke from a good rubber burning burnout!

(Dave & Lisa Carroll are area missionaries with InFaith, America's oldest Christian home mission agency. You can contact Dave at 406.459.8935 or [email protected].)